382 HARPER: BOTANICAL CROSS-SECTION OF MISSISSIPPI 
area having been devoted to that crop as long ago as 1880), but in 
recent years, especially since the approach of the boll-weevil, a 
great deal of alfalfa has been raised. A large amount of land also 
is now devoted to pasturage, as in many other parts of the world 
where agriculture has been long established. 
In such a fertile region forests, especially primeval forests, 
are of course scarce. Some parts of it indeed are said to have been 
treeless when first discovered, whence the name “‘prairie’’; but it 
would be hardly possible to determine the location and extent of 
the original prairie spots with any degree of satisfaction now. 
However, this is one of the few parts of the South where one can 
see fields and pastures on the sky-line in many places instead of all 
woods. The remaining forests are principally of two kinds: oak 
groves on broad low knolls of poorer soil (Lafayette?), and bottom- 
land forests near some of the creeks and rivers. The latter doubt- 
less owe their preservation to the fact that the earlier settlers 
found such land too difficult to drain, and often too insalubrious 
to live in; but the growing population continually requires more 
land, and the bottom-land trees are gradually disappearing before 
the axe of the farmer. Pines are not seen at all in this part of 
Mississippi, except an occasional solitary specimen of Pinus Taeda 
or P. echinata, presumably introduced. 
Although very different geologically, and not very similar in 
climate, there are some striking resemblances between the present 
appearance of this region and the prairie region of Illinois. Both 
have comparatively level topography and fertile grayish to 
blackish clay soil, and streams which fluctuate considerably and 
are muddy most of the time. Both have very little woodland at 
the present time (they were much less alike in this respect before 
the country was settled, though), and almost no evergreens. 
Luxuriant corn-fields make up a large part of the summer land- 
scape (in Illinois the crop is nearly all corn, but in Mississippi it 
is about half cotton), and finally in both regions the population 
is about as dense as extensive agriculture alone will support, and 
consequently it is practically at a standstill outside of the manu- 
facturing cities. 
Just as in the Cretaceous region of New Jersey and Delaware,* 
the herbaceous flora recognizable from a train consists mostly of 
* See Bull. Torrey Club 37: 425. 1910; Torreya 12: 22%. 1921. 
